I’m able to vote PSL where I live, so obviously I’m voting for them, but other than that I’m thinking of leaving the ballot mostly blank except for some amendments I like. There’s like one Berniecrat-sounding guy running for state legislature I might vote for, but it seems like every damn local politician is some flavor of conservative around here. What do you think?

  • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Kill the lib in your brain that spends any energy thinking about this shit. Don’t let libs colonize your brain into entertaining counterrevolutionary activities.

    I show up for 10 minutes, maybe do a web search or two, check some boxes and never fucking think about that shit again. That is the upper ceiling for how much thought you should be giving to electoralism.

  • mkultrawide [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    I voted PSL for president and left my Senate and House races blank because neither of them said shit about Palestine the whole election other than condeming Iran’s retaliation. I did vote straight Dem on my my state and local races because local Republicans are fucking nuts where I am. I get to vote on judges and I would definitely rather be in front of a democratic judge 90% of the time.

  • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    If you can prevent a psycho who wants to kill trans kids from getting on your local school board or something, by all means. But ultimately, touching grass and organizing is a better use of your time than normalizing about your ballot

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Whatever. If you think it’s worth your time to research them all and pick go for it. If not, don’t. The dsa or psl might have a voting guide for your area.

  • sewer_rat_420 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    For me there was one candidate who challenged our shitty anti-homeless city councilman who was pretty dope and progressive. She actually is a long time homeless advocate and lawyer and also did pro bono work for arrested pro-palenstine protestors. And she is openly bi and poly

    Also state provisions can matter, even if they arent perfect or are marginally good. In CA there is a proposition to legalize gay marriage in the state constitution (in case Oberfell gets overturned) as well as rent control and abolishing unpaid prisoner labor.

    There might be smaller scale elections like school board that have some wacky anti trans or anti vax single issue candidate that is worth defeating.

    But also I advocate for people to just not vote if they dont want to. Im just a nerd for filling in bubbles and knowing that i made a number go up by 1

    • dustbunnies [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      Im just a nerd for filling in bubbles

      !!! this is a type of nerd?!? MY PEOPLE

      haven’t had to take a standardized test in a very long time, and I miss the bubbles so much. I love trying to make them a perfectly uniform, perfectly shiny, perfectly circular little dot of graphite.

      I bet I could probably find some of the little scantron answer pages online just to fill in for fun 🤔

      • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.net
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        2 days ago

        Omg me too! Ngl the part that I felt the best about when filling out my ballot was not the votes themselves but filling in those little ovals and making them perfect.

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    If everyone on the ballot supports genocide or is silent about genocide, then there’s nobody to vote for and the decision is made for you.

    If anyone on the ballot denounces the genocide in Palestine and their record backs the denunciation up, then you should vote for them.

    None of my local Dems said anything against the genocide so I didn’t vote for Dems down-ballot either.

  • Azarova [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    i just spend at most 10 minutes googling the names to figure out which candidates are the least demonic. its not worth any more investment than that tbh

  • Mindfury [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    surely yay - i’m probably more lib on voting than half the site (I don’t outright refuse because aus-delenda-est’s system has the veneer of being more representative and i’m not directly blocked from voting for socialists), but i mean, if you’re there why wouldn’t you?

    I feel like America’s system is inherently designed to make local more powerful in the day-to-day then federal, so you may as well either find a leftist somewhere on the downballot stuff or at least fuck over some ghouls/spill the positions of existing judges or whatever.

    just don’t hold any belief that you’re immediately making a difference. every single bit of that ballot from top to bottom is trimming around the edges and we have to do the work elsewhere, but if you actually lined up for just the top choice, you’re already a lib anyway and you may as well do the rest for a laugh